


The Rite

by ogidni



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Kylo Ren is a virgin, M/M, Mystical Sex, Ritual Sex, Sex Magic, Sort Of, Tho not anymore, praise kink?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-17 23:40:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13087872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ogidni/pseuds/ogidni
Summary: Hux and Ren are adversarial instead of collaborative, and their leadership is fragmented and contradictory as a result. Snoke orders them to perform an ancient ritual to bind them together, to allow them to think and act as one.





	The Rite

**Author's Note:**

> First fic in this fandom, sorry if it sucks. Please comment to let me know what you think! (Unless, you know, it sucks.)

**1\. Prologue**

 

Whatever the damage to the Finalizer — and it had been extensive — both the survivors aboard and the commanding officers who had received and ultimately issued fatally conflicting orders were in agreement: Captain Phasma wasn’t to blame. A post-assault diagnostic report taking stock of the damage caused to the ship by the fumbled resistance ambush would reveal that the confusion had issued directly from General Hux and Master Ren, who had been out of communication for several days prior to the attack. One had given orders to counterattack and pursue; the other had advised a tactical retreat. 

 

It didn’t matter to the Supreme Leader who had supplied which orders, only that they had been unable to coordinate their efforts, and that it had crippled their plans, at least for the time being.

 

He addressed them together at the base, where they stood in the receiving chamber, side by side on the platform. Snoke loomed in hologram high above them, seemingly composing hi thoughts for several minutes, during which time Hux was certain he could hear the rough hiss of Ren’s breath through his vocabulator. 

 

He couldn’t have been more furious if Ren had ordered his assassination.  _ He might as well have,  _ Hux seethed. His life, and the lives of countless thousands, relied on the willingness of his men to act immediately and without hesitation on his orders; when Ren compromised their trust in him, he inflicted upon them a narrow breach of doubt. Even with the latest damage repaired, they would now have cause to wonder whether his word could be entirely trusted. And the thought held his spine tight as a bowstring, his jaw clenched in silent, impotent rage.

 

“It is a pity to see the glory of a true diarchy squandered among petty resentments,” Snoke pronounced at last, with a deep, groaned sigh. Hux felt a faint skepticism needling at his attention: Weren’t they a triumvirate, himself, Ren and Phasma? And even that was illusory; Snoke held all the power in his own person, and distributed it to them. 

 

“Do not think I selected either of you idly. You, General —” at that, Hux’s attention sharpened instantly, his focus closing in on the massive figure enthroned above, shedding ghostly light — “for your precision, your commitment to order, clarity, reason. Your very  _ discipline. _ ”

 

Hux gave a low murmur of gratitude, but rather hoped Snoke hadn’t heard. He had gone on speaking, anyhow, and when the force of his attention turned to Ren, Hux felt palpable relief. 

 

“And you, Kylo Ren, for your intuition, your zeal, the strength you derive from chaos. You have within you every capacity necessary to wield the full force of the Dark and yet — and yet!” Snoke thundered, and Hux tightened his fists at his sides. “And yet, the balance of your rule depends on a union of purpose. Divided, at odds, the two of you are worthless to me.”

 

“Supreme Leader,” Hux interjected, pressed to reaction by the mere mention of the word  _ worthless,  _ “If I may, sir, Ren’s orders were directly contrary to mine — without any consultation. He has no military command training —”

 

“Silence,” Snoke hissed, and then brought the great gnarled mass of his fingers together, interlocking them as if in thought. “The specifics of your failure do not interest me. It is the nature of it. You ought never be far from his mind, Kylo Ren.” 

 

Hux watched the faint light glint on Ren’s helmet as he gave a short, sharp nod. 

 

“Yes, Supreme Leader.”

 

“There are rituals meant to vivify such bonds. I will have you undergo one such next Primeday, at the first hour. Until then, you are dismissed with my deepest displeasure.” 

 

Hux turned on his heel the moment the hologram flickered to darkness, following the low lights along the path back to the corridor. Ren shouldered past him before the door parted, his long strides echoing in the dark chamber.

 

“Is that all?” Hux spat at Ren’s turned back as the doors slid shut behind them. They were alone in the corridor; the patrols were stationed far at either end, and Hux’s men knew well enough not to use this particular passage for daily errands.

 

“That is all,” Ren returned curtly in that low mechanical monotone, and made to walk away — and would have, were it not for Hux rapidly advancing on him.

 

“This  _ disaster,  _ Ren, was entirely —” 

 

“Careful, General. The Supreme Leader considers this matter closed until next Primeday.” 

 

Hux stood near enough to Ren to see his blurred reflection in the plates of his mask. 

 

“Pathetic,” he seethed, almost trembling from the sheer force of his anger, “hiding behind your master. When do you suppose he’ll cease to preserve your ridiculous play-acting and install a leader of substance?”

 

Ren’s fist knotted around the collar of Hux’s uniform jacket before he could dodge, and jerked him forward, up onto the balls of his feet. Hux snarled and wrapped both hands around the thickness of the gloved wrist, but Ren was steady, inscrutable; there was Force there, and Hux knew he was powerless against it. 

 

“It’s better for you that he settle it, General. If I were you, I’d let him.” Ren’s grip tightened, his knuckles digging into Hux’s throat, and the General growled and moved to thrust a knee up into his abdomen, but Ren had already dropped him and drawn back. Hux stumbled, and Ren paused for a moment as if to say something — helmet cocked up as if in thought — and then turned, with characteristic flourish, and disappeared down the corridor, leaving the general to right himself and face the remainder of his day. 

 

\--- 

 

_ There are rituals meant to vivify such bonds. _

 

Ren was certain that Snoke had fixed him firmly in his gaze when he had said it. The statement was intentionally cryptic, a prophecy of sorts. He knew he was intended to seek out Snoke’s meaning, to have some sense of what would be expected of him before they met again. The Supreme Leader would expect no less of his favorite student.

 

_...rituals meant to vivify… _

 

He knelt in his chambers and let his mind sink into a deep state of meditation. Here, removed from the world, he could glide with ease through memories of his training. 

 

Any number of rituals existed to harness and direct the Force to address specific crises. There were rituals for healing, rituals for cleansing, and those that could enhance a user’s abilities in the short term. Most assumed a community of users, and thus Ren had never been much interested in them. Nor had he needed them, or bothered to commit any to memory. 

 

_...vivify such bonds... _

 

It wouldn’t do to strain in a meditative state. Ren let himself drift downward, deeper and deeper into the murky haze of the past. There had been one day — unremarkable in most regards — he spent in Luke’s company, where the two of them had walked along the coast discussing the comings and goings of the tide, which as usual referred to some other, secret thing which he hadn’t been prepared to know just yet. And then Luke had broached the matter of sexuality, conjugal love. It was discouraged among Jedi, but there had been a few members of the order married over time, in unusual circumstances. In one situation, Luke told him, a ritual had been used to inculcate a touch of Force-sensitivity into the otherwise Force-null wife of a powerful Jedi, to sustain their link closely for the duration of her pregnancy. 

 

Over time he had come to understand that when Luke invoked the sea he meant to explain the strength of passion, and its mercurial way. And he had recalled the tale of the Jedi and his wife to suggest that the physical acts of love were neither vulgar nor destructive  _ per se,  _ only that they could be, they dwelt so near that interior sea of need and desire. 

 

Clarity came abruptly. Ren opened his eyes and gazed straight ahead, into the blank black wall of his empty chamber. 

 

Skywalker was given to say such things, and the Jedi to believe them. But they were foolish and weak. Snoke would never mandate such a thing — it was most likely legend anyhow, Ren now suspected, and the Supreme Leader was above superstition. 

 

Still he slept uneasily, troubled by strange dreams. 

 

In his mind’s eye, the dark expanse of space stretched out before him, its liquid blackness disrupted only by the occasional star or planet, glimmering softly like embedded pearls. He could see their finity, their very smallness against the vastness of the rippling night. From this vantage the war of the darkness against the light was almost fully won; there was little, precious little, left to do. And he felt he could do it — felt himself reaching out, his fingers surrounding these distant stars — if he could move through the pull of these crisscrossing orbits, which drew him away against his will like a sweeping undertow tide. 

 

\---

 

In the intervening week they gave one another a wide berth. Ren haunted his chambers. Hux stood astride his bridge with his hands clasped behind his back and his gaze set hard, overseeing and coordinating repair efforts. He mustered emergency medical teams to minimize personnel losses, and the effort was successful. 

 

The base’s medical bay was over capacity, so the wide halls just outside its precincts were set aside and lined with cots for the remaining injured. Medidroids could tend to them there, and the field surgeons could make their rounds. The cold air that hung there smelled of stinging disinfectant and menthol-scented bacta, with a faint, humid current of raw meat. Morale still stayed relatively high. They had lost fewer than they should have. Now and then, Ren glimpsed Hux passing among the wounded, stopping here and there to wish the conscious ones a speedy recovery, and to commend their dutiful service:  _ These must be the ten minutes of his day he sets aside for miscellaneous errands,  _ he mused. He could sense among the troopers varying shades of admiration for their General. 

 

For him they had only fear. He could feel the warm remains of their fond loyalty for Hux as he stalked among them, like the fronds of ferns wilting in frost.

 

\--- 

It was one more imposition, as far as Hux was concerned: One more indulgence for Kylo Ren, one more meeting with the Supreme Leader spent sorting out the knight’s neuroses and impulses and demands. From his point of view, the highest possible respect was paid in silence: Hux did not interfere with Ren’s dealings unless they directly pertained to or interfered with his own. That was, in part, Snoke’s complaint — which he well understood. Hux could imagine a more efficient system with the two of them working in tandem rather than in perfect isolation, but since the former had never seemed properly possible (thanks to Ren’s deficiencies), the latter had always seemed the most expedient. 

 

The general thought alone in his office, a favorably impressive series of linked chambers outfitted with surveillance equipment, data storage, screens and holographs for presentations. The barracks and mess hall were wired with cameras, of course, ever-watching eyes; but Ren’s quarters were excluded from his watch. 

 

_ Naturally,  _ Hux sneered to himself. Still he could see him haunting the corridors now and then, mostly making his way to and from his command shuttle; his tall shape passed through the frames like a strobe of blackness, scattering troopers in its wake. 

 

Outside his office — wintery silence. One window overlooked an icy vale streaked with peaks of black rock. There was no wind. Hux leaned back in his desk chair, uncharacteristically contemplative. 

 

Ren sometimes seemed to slouch. Such an odd habit for a man of his abilities. He had all the raw power and skill of a figure fit to be a legend, if not the psychological stamina. In any other context, Hux thought, he could’ve been deeply drawn to such power, pulled toward its orbit. But Ren was rash and sensitive, prone to fits and inspiration, given to bouts of wandering…

 

A dark motion at the corner of his eye startled Hux, who realized with an upright bolt he may have been dreaming. He whipped his vision to the doorway of his office, open into an empty corridor with guards stationed at either far end. They would let Ren pass, of course. But had they?

 

Hux straightened his uniform and stood, the tips of his gloved fingers ghosting over the polished steel of his desk. He did not ask his guards if they had seen Ren, he decided. If they had, it didn’t matter. If they hadn’t, he did not want to supply even the vaguest notion that he could, at times, feel the knight’s presence at the edges of his consciousness, a shadow stirring the surface of his mind. 

 

**2\. Primeday**

 

They met outside the chamber at the appointed hour. 

 

“Decent of you to arrive on time,” Hux observed curtly, though punctuality had never really been among Ren’s difficulties.

 

“You’re very glib,” Ren returned, and the low pitch humming through the vocabulator gave Hux pause. 

 

“I suppose I shouldn’t be. Most wouldn’t be, in any case, if they were preparing to receive punishment for another’s mistake.”

 

“I doubt we’ll be so lucky,” Ren muttered. It gave Hux pause, but the chamber doors hissed open and he followed Ren inside, his eyes adjusting slowly to the darkness.

 

When they reached the platform, Hux observed a strange series of markings glowing on the black lacquered flooring underfoot. What at first appeared to be nothing more than a scattered cluster of runic symbols faintly glowing icy blue turned out to be, upon further inspection, the outer perimeter of an angular figure-8 shape filled with similar sigils. At its peak were several more outside the shape’s border. Two small bowls at the center of the strange marking, fashioned from onyx or pewter — he couldn’t be sure in the low light — seemed to hold liquid platinum. 

 

The Supreme Leader appeared before them. 

 

“Have you considered my parting remarks, Kylo Ren?”

 

“I have,” the knight returned.

 

“Do you find fault with my plan?”

 

Ren hesitated, and then spoke haltingly.

 

“I — do not, Supreme Leader.”

 

This seemed to please Snoke, who leaned back in his throne and flexed his fingers. 

 

Now Hux felt thoroughly uncertain. Snoke addressed him next.

 

“I understand you are ill-contented with your current arrangement, General. Finding it inadequate myself, I have decided that the two of you shall perform a certain ritual, which will confer upon you a powerful link. It will aid in your working together as one. You will each be more valuable to us in that case.”

 

As his low, steady tone thundered above, Snoke whispered directly into Ren’s mind:  _ It is as you have determined. Give yourself fully, or nothing will be achieved, and you shall be less than useless to us. Pour yourself into him, and your power will only multiply.  _

 

“Supreme Leader,” Hux tried after a pause, and his voice was still even though his posture had tightened to a nervous stiffness, “may I ask what the ritual entails?” 

 

“The two of you shall guide one another. The knight shall give, and the general shall receive. General, obey your knight. Knight, obey your general. Your command is to complete the ritual. You may begin.”

 

Snoke’s imperious silence flustered Hux who, still standing over those glowing sigils, had no better idea of what sort of  _ ritual  _ he was being asked —  _ ordered  _ — to perform. He turned to Ren, who had likewise turned to face him, and there was a long moment of tense silence before the knight brought both gloved hands up to the release mechanisms on either side of his plated helmet and activated them, easing the mask away from his face. 

 

Hux startled.

 

“Ren?”

 

“It’s a ritual to channel the Force, to bind Force-nulls with users. It…” he gestured to the designs underneath them. “It’s carnal.” 

 

“ _ Carnal _ ?”

 

Ren was already shedding his hood and cape, releasing the catches of his thick gloves. 

 

“It is a carnal ritual,” he repeated. 

 

Hux had seen his face occasionally, though only in sudden glimpses. Now that he looked at him straight on, with wide-eyed horror, he realized how young, how almost shy Ren appeared, how very much a boy. Hux himself had more than enough experience with pleasures of all kinds, though he rarely found time these days. He wondered, beneath the cold sting of shock that still froze him speechless, if Ren was still a virgin.

 

“I thought you said there wasn’t to be a punishment,” he hissed through closed teeth.

 

“It isn’t,” Ren answered, and then scowled, noting the insult. “I suggest you undress.”

 

The hologram of Snoke had faded, leaving only a few shafts of dim, sourceless light hanging in the still air. The two turned away from one another to strip. 

 

“I would still prefer to know the exact details of this  _ ritual,”  _ Hux muttered over his shoulder.

 

Ren was stepping out of his boots. “I’ll anoint you. Then you lie on —”

 

“ _ Anoint  _ me?”

 

“—Then you lie on the octagram,” Ren gritted out, “and we...couple.”

 

“ _ Couple _ ?” 

 

Ren turned, snarling, stripped now of his tunic. A red flush spread over his neck and chest, from embarrassment or anger, Hux couldn’t be sure.

 

“If you act like this, if you won’t cooperate, it’ll fail. If it fails, he’ll either have us do it again, or worse.” 

 

“I  _ am  _ cooperating,” Hux shot back — and he, too, was stripped to his flared jodhpurs, working on his polished boot.

 

“You’re not. You’re resisting, and if you resist, it’ll fail. The Force cannot be fooled. If you won’t —”

 

“Enough. So that’s  _ all  _ then, I lie here and you sodomize me, and then we’re finished?”

 

Hux jumped as Ren clapped both hands on his shoulders, squeezing with strength that had to have been augmented by Force. He leveled his gaze directly at Hux, who returned the stare with flinty reserve. And for a second it appeared Ren intended to say something, his jaw clenched and teeth gritted, but instead he jerked Hux against him and pressed his mouth to the general’s — a hard, percussive kiss, full of nervous energy but without any expertise. Ren’s hands found their way up to Hux’s neck, and he was certain in that moment that the fearsome knight was indeed a virgin.

 

“You haven’t done this before,” Hux breathed when, at last, Ren saw no other choice but to break the kiss for air. 

 

“I never had the occasion,” Ren snapped. He was now working open his breeches, and Hux began to do the same.

 

“Was it forbidden among the Knights?” 

 

Ren paused. Hux sounded sincere.

 

“Forbidden. And unwise.” 

 

“I can imagine.”

 

Ren stood naked at last, with his fingers flexing at his sides as if searching for some purpose, and his eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance. Hux took the opportunity to appraise his body frankly. Out of costume most men struck less imposing figures, but the same couldn’t be said of Ren, whose wide shoulders seemed even broader absent his usual hood. He was thickly muscled throughout and striped with battle scars, dark freckles strewn over him like a star map. Ren took a deep breath as Hux looked on, his lungs swelling in his broad chest and sinking again unsteadily. Then he knelt down, scooping up one of the small bowls.

 

“For the anointing, I presume,” Hux observed, now nude himself. Ren looked over him only shyly, though his skin was so milky white as to glow in the darkness of the chamber. 

 

“Yes,” Ren said. “It’s a liquid alloy. In low concentrations, the current of the Force turns it transparent.” 

 

“I see. Shall I?”

 

“No,” Ren answered firmly, “I will.” 

 

He drew up near, dipping two fingers in the swirling silvery fluid, and then brought them up to Hux’s forehead, marking him with a gentle touch. It seemed to have no temperature, no texture, just liquid smoothness. 

 

“Just there?”

 

“There should be three marks, where you feel most alive.” A careful, studious tone. Hux raised an eyebrow.

 

“Where  _ I  _ feel most alive?”

 

“Where you feel most alive  _ to me,”  _ Ren clarified, with the barest hint of levity. Another smear of liquid fell on the divot of Hux’s chest, and beneath his navel, just above the sparse trail of gingery hair leading downward. 

 

“Now on the floor, is it?”

 

Ren nodded, and knelt down as Hux did, as if to spare him the humiliation of going to the floor alone. He watched the general find his way to the center of the symbol, which now seemed to be growing even brighter with proximity to Ren. One palm went astride the peak of it, and then the other —

 

A tentative hand slid over Hux’s hip; his attention snapped back to Ren, pale eyes flashing. 

 

“Other way,” he said simply.

 

“Oh?”

 

“I need to be able to see your face,” he explained, not impatiently. 

 

Hux sucked his teeth, contemplating this new indignity, but submitted anyway, turning to lie on the floor with his knees drawn up and his arms somewhat awkwardly straight at his sides. After a moment’s consideration, he spread his legs to make space for Ren. There would need to be quite a bit.

 

The knight moved over him, touched the lines of the sigils underneath; they shone and glittered, forming light patterns high above like sunlight off the currents of water, which Hux focused on with a steady exhale as Ren fitted himself between his thighs. He felt the brush of Ren’s soft cock against his groin, and caught a glimpse of the tense furrow forming in his brow as he glared down between them.

 

One didn’t need much exposure to Ren to learn his inclination to express frustration in frantic outbursts. Hux could already feel Ren’s shoulders trembling in what he took to be the beginnings of furious embarrassment, and so he brought his hands up to them, one palm sliding upward to Ren’s neck, fingers threading into his hair. 

 

Ren stilled. 

 

“Have you been with a man before?” Hux knew the answer perfectly well, and asked anyway.

 

A short jerk of his head. “No.”

 

“You’ll have to prepare me. Do you understand?”

 

Ren’s gaze flickered to the other low bowl as recognition lit in his eyes. 

 

“Yes.”

 

“And I’ll prepare you.” One of his pale hands now moved between their bodies, glancing over the hard planes of Ren’s middle before meeting the soft skin of his sex.

 

“Yes,” he breathed.

 

He could feel Ren stirring in his hand; it was a heady and foreign feeling, having the softest and most intimate part of such a powerful creature cradled in the warmth of his palm. Ren pushed back slightly to busy himself with what appeared to Hux to be opalescent oil; when he moved in close again, his hips stuttered against Hux’s stroking, and his fingers disappeared between the general’s legs. 

 

“That’s it,” Hux encouraged, which earned from Ren an arched brow, and perhaps would have elicited a snide remark, had his cock not been stiffening against the other’s creamy stomach. Ren worked an oiled finger in with careful pressure, and Hux readjusted his posture to accept the second. 

 

“You’ve been with a man before,” Ren said softly.

 

“I have,” Hux agreed, and then, licking his lips: “None have matched your measure.”

 

A tense, wordless moment — Hux felt Ren’s fingers go still inside him — and then the knight pressed his mouth to the other’s again, with no less furor, though more finesse. His plush lips moved against Hux’s and his tongue chased his general’s, slowing only when the other seemed to hesitate. 

 

“Well done,” Hux said, and then: “Slowly.”

 

By then, Ren was fully hard in his hand, the blunt tip of his cock smearing slick fluid over Hux’s pale stomach. He had taken well to praise, Hux noted; he wondered if there was some lack of it in his history. 

 

He drew his hands up Ren’s flanks as he positioned himself to push inside, his jaw set in concentration. Hux let his eyes fall shut, let his body go slack; if he had to be fucked for the greater good — he had been fucked for less noble reasons — he would let himself have it, have this strange and wild pleasure. 

 

Hux felt the pressure of Ren’s tentative press, the delicious tightening before his body gave way and opened, sending a shudder up his spine. His mouth fell open; “ _ Ren. _ ” Another push, deeper now, and the nerves inside him lit. Ren was close, now, to where he needed him — just a  _ little  _ deeper, he thought, and almost pled it; instead he brought his thighs up to frame the knight’s waist and drew him in. 

 

“ _ Yes, _ ” he groaned, and his spine arched up and his pulse rushed in his ears, and it occurred to him through a haze of pleasure that he hadn’t felt any pain — any, not the stretch of it, not the burn he sometimes savored, not the bruising depth, though he knew he was speared fully on Ren’s cock. His eyes fluttered open in confusion, and met Ren’s.

 

“Are you alright?”

 

“Can’t feel any pain,” Hux gasped. 

 

“I’m not  _ letting  _ you feel any pain.”

 

“A Force trick — ah — I see…” 

 

“Do you approve?” 

 

_ Smug prick,  _ Hux thought, though somewhat fondly. He squeezed Ren with his thighs and drew him in deep again, sending stars scattering into oblivion in his own field of vision. 

 

“For the, for the ritual,” Hux panted, “I take it  _ you  _ have to climax. Must I as well?” 

 

“Suppose you should,” Ren returned, “to be on the safe side.” 

 

Hux grinned —  _ glib bastard —  _ despite himself, and bucked up, meeting Ren in his stroke, inviting more, harder, deeper. He could come untouched, knew he could, if Ren had the stamina to keep giving it to him like this. He wove his fingers into the long hair at the base of the knight’s neck and held him near as he bucked back against him, closing in on his peak. 

 

He moaned for more, and Ren wanted to give it to him — found himself shocked by how badly he wanted,  _ needed  _ to comply.  _ Obey your general,  _ Snoke had said, but this urge to give was greater than acquiescence to the Leader’s command. His vision felt blurred at the edges; he could see Hux beneath him, but he could see only the wide expanse of space spreading out under his body, with distant stars glittering where the sigils had been. The senses he had cultivated in his training grew intensely acute; there was Force flowing in him, around them, and there was a deep and urgent  _ want  _ of it inside Hux that he could now feel as precisely as his own tense desire. 

 

Ren knew he had to channel it, to direct it. He had to concentrate, and he buried his face against Hux’s as he turned inward, his hips still snapping at that fierce pace, one fragment of his attention still focused on numbing the general’s pain. 

 

_ Foolish,  _ he thought,  _ and weak.  _ If he hadn’t split his focus sparing Armitage Hux, of all people, a pain he’d likely felt a thousand times before —

 

“Ren,” he cried, and his voice was thin and broken and he was — 

 

Warmth splashed between them, and the faint earthy scent reached him, and it had been worth it, he then knew, to spare him the pain, to make him feel  _ this.  _ His body spasmed around Ren’s cock and he pulled his mind inward, squeezed his eyes closed and directed all his mental resources to the core of energy tightening within him, and when he came he felt it flow, rush through him and forth, felt the sparks of its energy rippling inside him and through the end of every nerve. 

 

Hux felt his orgasm winding down as Ren’s began — he felt the knight’s cock jerk in him, the familiar warmth spreading inside — but then the pleasure seemed all to return in a sudden rush: He arched up hard with his mouth wide open, some guttural sound of surprise bubbling from his throat. His cock was spent but he felt his hips jerking again, again, as though he were still spilling seed over his pale belly, as though he had any more to give. When he he at last felt aware again, he was breathing raggedly with Ren heavy atop him.

 

“Did it,” Hux swallowed, licked his lips, tried again: “Did it work?”

 

Ren pushed himself up heavily, peering down at the man between his arms. He ran his fingers through the alloy he had placed on Hux’s forehead earlier, and held his hand up as if to catch the dim light. There was a sheen there, but no color; Hux nodded, satisfied. 

 

“I suppose we’re finished, then.”

 

“I suppose so.” 

 

Ren stood and, before dressing, held his hand out for Hux, who accepted it without a second thought and rose to his feet. 

 

It occurred to Hux only afterward, as he paced the length of his command bridge several days later, that taking the hand of Kylo Ren in that moment had been a strange thing to do. But he reasoned that it hadn’t really been so odd in the context of having just made love to him on the floor of the Supreme Leader’s receiving chamber. Indeed, very little could feel inappropriate with that taken into account.

 

_ The Supreme Leader is wise,  _ Ren supplied through their newly fashioned link.

 

Hux permitted himself a small, private smile. 

 

_ He is wise indeed.  _


End file.
